Hayut: People will suffer if they can’t challenge unreasonable ministerial decisions

Supreme Court President Justice Esther Hayut challenges Ilan Bombach, the attorney representing the government, over the total ban the law imposed on the courts’ ability to review government and ministerial decisions based on the reasonableness standard.

She argues that numerous citizens have in the past received justifiable relief from unreasonable ministerial decisions through the reasonableness standard, and that there are such cases still pending before the courts, but that they no longer have anyone to turn to.

“The reasonableness standard has existed for decades, at least 40 years if not since the beginning of the state, and you are blocking every court from granting relief to litigants and saying the court cannot even hear the case.

“There are thousands of individual decisions that ministers make that affect citizens’ daily lives, and citizens who report to the courts on unreasonable decisions but they aren’t able to prove that inappropriate considerations were used. Most of the time we don’t intervene, but sometimes there is reason to do so. But today the law prevents every court in the country from doing so,” she says.